“Shut up,” he growled, trying again.
Nothing was happening. Not like when Aura died and gave Luna her power. “Maybe all that power you’ve been seeking died with them.” Laughter bubbled up from me again. “Serves you right.”
A look of rage on his face, he approached, the sword, still slick with Luna’s blood, raised over his head.
Movement caught my eye, and when I looked, I saw Luna on her feet behind him, a vision of lovely death. She wrenched the sword away from him, catching Malex by surprise. I ducked as she spun in a full arc and sliced his head off, and then lightning fast, took off his arms. They landed on the ground beside his body and then it, too, fell to the earth with a dull thump.
Before the dust settled I was on my feet, rushing to her. “How are you alive?” I started to kiss her lips, but she raised her hair off her neck to reveal Malex’s mark. I gladly erased it from her skin, running my hands over her arms and back as I searched for wounds, but there were none beneath the shredded tunic. “How is this possible?” I asked, shocked.
“You act like you’re happy to see me, Prince,” she smirked.
“I am. I’m not sure what I just witnessed, though.”
“We need to make sure he’s dead,” she said, her tone serious.
Malex, and all his pieces, stayed on the ground. Nothing moved. Not even a finger twitched as she extended her hand and lit him on fire. She burned his flesh to ash and brittle bone, and then blew the remnants of him away on a powerful wind.
“Luna,” I said, looking at her, clutching her upper arms so she turned her feline eyes on me.
“How did you survive it? I saw him pierce your heart. He ran you through.”
“I know it upset you. I saw your face when it happened. I thought the smile might reassure you, but it must have been creepy with all the blood in my mouth.” She looked over at her sister’s body. “Malex forgot two important things. The first was that when my sister sent her power into me, it gave me all the powers of a full-blooded fae—including immortality. And even if that hadn’t been the case, I had a failsafe of sorts. A back-up plan.”
“What back-up plan?” I gaped at her in awe.
“Ember,” she said simply, shrugging. “Our lives have been bound since I claimed her. And cats... have nine lives.” She laughed, a tinkling, musical sound. “Well, eight now. He took one from her with his poison.”
Nine lives? I thought that was a myth. “Will he stay dead?”
“I’m not sure. I planned to cut him apart and scatter the pieces so he’d never find them again, but burning him felt right.”
I blinked rapidly.
“Don’t look at me like that. We couldn’t risk him springing up again, now could we?”
“No,” I said, grabbing her bloodied and mud-smeared face and planting a kiss on her lips. “We couldn’t risk that.” Hesitant, I asked, “Are you okay? I saw you after Aura gave you her power. You looked... terrifying.”
“I am.”
“Fine, or terrifying?” I asked.
She smiled in the mischievous way she always did and winked. “Both.”
Then she looked toward Aura’s prone body, and it was like everything hit her at once in a deep tide of exhausted grief.
LUNA
I crouched beside my sister. The moon’s strength was fading, but I didn’t feel tired at all. I felt the sun’s bolstering strength supporting me. With Aura’s power now rushing through my body, combined with my own, I was the daughter of the sun and moon. I wondered if I would ever need to sleep again.
Brushing her hair back, I spoke to her. “Why did you do it? You hated me.”
“But she didn’t,” Phillip said. “I think she was afraid of you; afraid of what you’d do to get revenge for William. But she didn’t hate you. That much was clear.”
“She certainly didn’t love me.”
“Maybe she did, the only way she knew how.”
Maybe he was right and she did. She told me once that the only reason she killed all those people was to protect me and preserve us. She felt strongly that she had the right to do it, even if she ended up being wrong about that.
I never imagined that she would cede her power to me. She was the one who was supposed to be Queen, the one to have all the power and control the comings and goings of Virosa, keeping it alive. That would fall on me now, if I wanted to stay here.
I held her hand in mine. It was cold. I expected her to squeeze it and pull me down to the ground as a joke, wallowing me into the mud the way we did as children. But Aura’s eyes were fixed sightlessly on the sky.
Closing her lids, I pulled Malex’s knife from her chest, the one that was meant for me. I was the one who was supposed to be dead. Not her. I’d fought with her so long, living tethered to her since birth, that I suddenly felt lost; adrift on a sea with no way to paddle or steer my vessel, and no stars to guide me even if I could.
Placing my hand on her wound, I tried to seal it and give her powers back to her, hoping to bring her back from the tight grip of death. But that was still one power the fae didn’t have. Not even fae Kings, or Queens.
Aura was truly gone.
I was rid of her at last, and in the end, didn’t want to be. Fate could be cruel in its punishment of those who sought revenge.
“I need to bury her,” I finally said.
“I can do it,” Phillip offered.
I shook my head and stood up, lifting Aura’s limp body into my arms. I carried her toward the stone fence that I’d blasted apart upon arriving and sat her down to use my power, extending my hands and making a hole appear in the earth. Phillip climbed down into it and I gently placed her in his arms. He lowered her to the bottom and climbed back up into the sunshine.
“Peace be with you, sister. Well, not Peace, your bird. I guess I’ll have to take care of her now.”
As if I’d conjured the poor animal, she appeared on the branch of a nearby tree, cooing for her mistress.
“Thank you for what you did, Aura.”
Silently, I thanked her for being… her. Terrible and misguided, ruthless and beautiful. Without this path we traveled, I wouldn’t have found Phillip.
My chest felt tight and heavy, and despite all we did to tear each other apart, seeing her broken and dead was more than I could handle. I urged the dirt to cover her up. “I’ll have a stone engraved as soon as I can,” I said, my voice thick.
Phillip hugged me tightly, turning my face into his chest and murmuring soothing words to tell me it would be okay. But it didn’t feel okay. My sister was gone. I was now responsible for her familiar, which meant that I had to keep Ember from eating her now that she was just a simple bird, unbound from my sister.
And Phillip? He would be leaving soon. Nothing was keeping him here. Aura had healed him and Malex was nothing but dust and bone. Phillip was finally safe and could go home and be everything his people needed him to be. Somehow, the human Prince had come out of this whole ordeal relatively unscathed.
“You could use a hot bath,” he offered, walking with me toward the castle.